In comic books, an intercompany crossover (also called cross-company or company crossover) is a comic or series of comics where characters that are the property of one company meet those owned by another (for example, DC Comics' Superman meeting Marvel's Spider-Man, DC's Batman meeting Marvel's Wolverine. These usually occur in special "one-shot" issues or a miniseries.

Some crossovers are part of canon—for example, JLA/Avengers, which has been made canon in the DC Universe[1] — but most are outside of the continuity of a character's regular title or series of stories. They can be a joke or gag, a dream sequence, or even a "what if" scenario (such as DC's Elseworlds).

Marvel/DC crossovers (which are mostly non-canon) include those where the characters live in alternate universes, as well as those where they share the "same" version of Earth. Some fans have posited a separate "Crossover Earth" for these adventures.[2] In the earliest licensed crossovers, the companies seemed to prefer shared world adventures. They took this approach to the first intercompany superhero crossover, 1976's Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, and followed the same format in 1981 with Superman and Spider-Man.

Besides the two Superman/Spider-Man crossovers, a number of other DC/Marvel adventures took place on a "Crossover Earth", but later intercompany crossovers tended to present the DC and Marvel Universes as alternate realities, bridged when common foes made this desirable. (The interest in overall continuity has become a major part of even crossover comic books.)[3]

Characters are often licensed or sold from one company to another, as with DC acquiring such characters of Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and Charlton Comics as the original Captain Marvel, Plastic Man and Captain Atom. In this way, heroes originally published by different companies can become part of the same fictional universe, and interactions between such characters are no longer considered intercompany crossovers.

Although a meeting between a licensed character and a wholly owned character (e.g., between Red Sonja and Spider-Man, or Ash Williams and the Marvel Zombies) is technically an intercompany crossover, comics companies rarely bill them as such. Likewise is the case when some characters in an ongoing series are owned or to some extent controlled by their creators, as with Doctor Whoantagonists the Daleks, which are not owned by the UKtelevision network the BBC although the character of The Doctor is.

Writers during the 1960s and early 1970s sometimes engaged in a form of intercompany crossover with thinly disguised imitations of a competing company's characters, as opposed to parodies in satirical-humor stories. In this way, Marvel's superhero team the Avengers met a version of DC's Justice League of America (Squadron Sinister/Squadron Supreme) in The Avengers #70, 85-86, and 147-48. In Action Comics #351-53 (1967) DC's Superman met a villain called Zha-Vam, whose powers and name were derivative of Captain Marvel (then owned by Fawcett Comics) and of the magic word Shazam that gave Captain Marvel his powers. Superman similarly met versions of Marvel's Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Sub-Mariner (The Kookie Quartet, Cobweb Kid, and Sub-Moron) in The Inferior Five #10 (Oct. 1968).

In the 1970s, the annual Rutland Halloween Parade in Rutland, Vermont was used as the setting of a number of superhero comic books published by both Marvel and DC Comics. Costumed parade attendees in these books were often depicted wearing the uniforms of characters from the other company. In the fall of 1972, writers Len Wein, Gerry Conway and Steve Englehart crafted a metafictional unofficial intercompany crossover spanning titles from both major comics companies. Each comic featured Englehart, Conway, and Wein, as well as Wein's first wife Glynis, interacting with Marvel or DC characters at the Rutland Halloween Parade. Beginning in Amazing Adventures #16 (by Englehart with art by Bob Brown and Frank McLaughlin), the story continued in Justice League of America #103 (by Wein, Dillin and Dick Giordano), and concluded in Thor #207 (by Conway and penciler John Buscema). As Englehart explained in 2010, "It certainly seemed like a radical concept and we knew that we had to be subtle (laughs) and each story had to stand on its own, but we really worked it out. It's really worthwhile to read those stories back to back to back — it didn't matter to us that one was at DC and two were at Marvel — I think it was us being creative, thinking what would be really cool to do."[5][6][7][8][9] Other issues featuring the parade include Batman #237, DC Super Stars #18, Freedom Fighters #6, The Avengers # 83 and #119, and Marvel Feature # 2.

The concept of intercompany crossovers has also been explored in video games, usually in the form of having one video game company licensed out its characters to another (or vice versa).

Earlier intercompany crossovers in games occurred by taking advantage of licensing for publishing rights. GORF in 1981, produced by Midway, has the missions Astro Battles and Galaxians, which make use of characters and names from Space Invaders (Taito Corporation) and Galaxian (Namco) which at the time of the development of GORF were licenced to Midway Mfg. In 1992, Tradewest released Battletoads & Double Dragon, at that time, Tradewest owned the rights for publishing of Double Dragon by Technos Japan and Battletoads by Rare Ltd.. Rare Ltd. developed the game while Technos Japan was barely involved in the production of the game.

In 1989, DIC Entertainment produced Captain N: The Game Master, a cartoon show that featured characters and settings from Nintendo franchises and others appearing on Nintendo video game systems, possibly, taking advantage of Nintendo's licensing system to publish games. Characters such as Simon Belmont, Dracula and Alucard from Konami, Mega Man, Dr. Wily and Dr. Light from Capcom, Malkil of Wizards and Warriors from Rare and settings from Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy (by Square Enix, independent from each other at that time), Burger Time (Data East) and Faxanadu (Hudson Soft/Falcom) appeared in the series. The 1990 animated series, The Power Team (part of the Video Power TV show) had characters from arcade games ported by Acclaim to the NES as well as games which Acclaim had publishing rights. These games were NARC, Arch Rivals (Midway), Kwirk (Atlus), Wizards & Warriors (RARE) and BigFoot (based on the famous monster truck from the game by Beam Software).

After the successful Capcom/SNK crossovers, many others have appeared since then.

Midway Games' Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe pitted characters from Midway's Mortal Kombat video game franchise against DC Comics characters Superman, Batman, The Joker, and others. This game was produced prior to the acquisition of Midway by Warner Bros., since then, Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street (a WB movie) appeared in Mortal Kombat (2011) and Scorpion appeared in Injustice: God Among Us (2013). However, these can't be considered intercompany crossovers. Kratos, from Sony's God of War franchise, appeared as an exclusive in the Playstation 3 version of Mortal Kombat (2011).

The games Super Smash Bros. and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale were made possible by the "second party" model, in which independent developers work closely with the console maker to ensure exclusivity and quality. In both games, other third parties also appear as guest characters.

^Voger, Mark; Voglesong, Kathy (2003). "Front Page Romance". Hero Gets Girl!: The Life and Art Of Kurt Schaffenberger. TwoMorrows Publishing. p. 45. ISBN1-893905-29-2. 'That was sort of an 'in' joke.' [artist Kurt Schaffenberger] later told an interviewer. '[Editor] Mort [Weisinger] knew what I was doing. We both figured at that time that Captain Marvel was a thing of the past...He was colored differently - green instead of red, I think. But then when reprinted in a Lois Lane Annual [sic], they put the red union suit on him.'

^McAvennie, Michael; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1970s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 165. ISBN978-0-7566-6742-9. The Yellow Brick Road from Munchkin Land to the Emerald City was also wide enough to accommodate DC and Marvel as they produced their first-ever joint publication...Roy Thomas scripted a faithful, seventy-two page adaptation of Dorothy Gale's adventure, while John Buscema's artwork depicted the landscape of Oz in lavish detail.

^McAvennie "1970s" in Dolan, p. 170: "The tale was written by Gerry Conway and drawn by Ross Andru, both among the few [at that time] to ever have worked on both Superman and Spider-Man...The result was a defining moment in Bronze Age comics."

^Manning, Matthew K. "1980s" in Dolan, p. 194: "In an oversized treasury edition carrying a hefty $2.50 price tag, the Man of Steel paired for the second time with Marvel's iconic web-slinger...The issue came together thanks to the script of writer Jim Shooter, a bit of plotting assistance by Marv Wolfman, the pencils of longtime Marvel luminary John Buscema, and a veritable fleet of inkers."

^Manning "1980s" in Dolan, p. 195 "Written by Len Wein and illustrated by José Luis García-López, the comic saw...Batman and the Hulk doing battle with both the Joker and Marvel's ultra-powerful Shaper of Worlds."

^Manning "1980s" in Dolan, p. 199: "The issue, written by longtime X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and drawn by Walter Simonson [was]...one of the most well-received crossovers of its time - or of any time for that matter - the team-up was a huge success."

^Manning "1990s" in Dolan, p. 267: "This prestige one-shot marked Frank Miller's return to Batman, and was labeled as a companion piece to his classic 1986 work Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The issue was drawn by Todd McFarlane, one of the most popular artists in comic book history."

^Manning "1990s" in Dolan, p. 272: "Written by Peter David and Ron Marz with art by Dan Jurgens and Claudio Castellini, this four-issue miniseries event consisted of five major battles voted on in advance by reader ballots distributed to comic stores."

^Cowsill, Alan "2000s" in Dolan, p. 311 "[JLA/Avengers] was an event that...proved to be one of the biggest and best of the DC and Marvel crossovers, incorporating many of the two companies' greatest heroes and villains."